The present invention relates to apparatus and methods of local anesthesia injection techniques in dentistry, and more particularly to training techniques for dental and dental hygiene students to learn proper local anesthesia injection procedures.
Standard dental injection techniques consist of a complex, multi-step pre-penetration phase and a blind post-penetration phase that is dependent on proper implementation of phase one. The invention addresses all steps in phase one. FIG. 3 is summary of common steps in each phase. Current instructional methods for training dental students in the proper injection procedures for administering local anesthesia to a student patient involves the use of sharp dental injection needles. This creates great anxiety in both the student and the patient. It also presents an environment for producing injury to one or both of the patient and student. Accordingly, this limits the student's ability to practice pre-penetration procedures to just a few attempts for each of the different dental injection techniques. Since acute anxiety has been demonstrated to dramatically decrease comprehension and retention in students, use of the safe needle enhances and accelerates the learning process.
To alleviate this concern, some dental schools have advocated the use of simulated teaching environment, such as mouth models. While models may be anatomically acceptable, they cannot replicate the complex and varied anatomy or intraoral environment, which includes tongue and tissue movement, saliva or patient compliance. Moreover, video instruction, demonstrations, computer simulations cannot create the muscle memory needed to train dental students for the complexity of performing intra-oral injections.
As can be seen, there is a need for an improved apparatus and method for training dental and hygiene students on the proper application of local anesthesia injection techniques in a calm, relaxed atmosphere.